Décor n°2 : Vulgaire

The second issue of the annual magazine of the École des Arts Décoratifs-PSL, dedicated to the question of the vulgar, explores a word that embodies all the tensions of our time, addressing gastronomy and cinema as much as fatphobia, glitter and fanzines, the Yellow Vests, Trump, and Putin. Through interviews, portfolios, theoretical and fictional texts, the journal examines, in a dual movement of immersion and critical distance, this shared dimension of humanity – which is at once that of the people, the body, the organic, the affects, the obscene, and transgression.

Under the direction of Judith Abensour, Elsa Boyer, and Rose Vidal (teachers and a student at the École des Arts Décoratifs), around sixty contributors from various fields of theory, as well as literary and artistic creation, confront the vulgar in both its material and sensory dimensions, taking the risk of allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by its excesses: from “bling-bling” gold to the fluorescent yellow of signage, from gore to the stench of the commonplace. The vulgar, often the target of contemptuous judgment used to justify social division, is revealed here as the source of a broader aspiration toward representation and shared experience.